WORLD

179 professors to stand trial over plagiarism

Nearly 200 university professors have been caught on charges of committing plagiarism by publishing existing books written by other authors under their names, according to Yonhap news agency.

The Uijeongbu District Prosecutors' Office probing the case said it has formally indicted 74 professors and summarily indicted 105 others from the universities across the country on charges of violating copyright laws and breach of trust.

Five employees of four different publishing companies have also been indicted over allegedly cooperating with the professors, they said.

"The professors face charges of writing their name after changing the authors' names on the books and publishing the books as if they were their own," said a prosecutor probing the case.

They allegedly committed the crime to improve their academic standing in time for assessment by universities, prosecutors said.

The prosecution office alleges that the publishers condoned the crime to profit from relatively unpopular science or math books while the original authors also overlooked the practice to maintain good relations with publishing companies.

It marks the first time that the prosecution office has massively charged university professors for the scheme, a common phenomenon in local academia.

Professors and publishers have repeatedly republished books by just changing the names of the authors and a few words since the 1980s.